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[Scrow]

This is either very good news, or very bad news:

not completely accurate imo, because those curves don't grow in a vacuum independent of each other. they influence each other. the "technology" curve would probably plateau and rise because social, business, and political factors hold it back.

 

[Burger]

not completely accurate imo, because those curves don't grow in a vacuum independent of each other. they influence each other. the "technology" curve would probably plateau and rise because social, business, and political factors hold it back.

Hey man, stop hating my graphs.

 

[MaddenNFL64]

computer error would be way less worrisome than the errors of all the other drivers on the road

Driving will be a thing of the past, something you do for fun. A.I controlled vehicles will be shown to be safer, with much less error than human beings.

 

[Soul_Pie]

What a fantastic thread.

I love technology and the thought of where we'll be years from now.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Technology can take a long run off a short pier.
I'm still waiting for my hoverboard and all we get is bigger phones with worse battery life, so dissapointing

 

[Zaptruder]

It's like this:

Either humans are magic, or a computer can do it too.

At some point (how much better computers can do tasks that humans can do and more), it becomes something of a philosophical question.

If we have non-biological entities and integrated biological entities outperforming normal humans by several orders of magnitude...

What you'll find is that; perception of time scale changes, and perhaps more avenues are been explored and filled out than we are ready to do so.

It's concievable, that with such an accelerated rate of intelligence that we'll fill out every avenue of pursuit* within a short time span rendering everything... passe.

*for example in science, it's concievable that we'll enter a period where there is no longer discovery, having discovered the very core principles that binds the universe together, and using it to create models that are able to create highly accurate if not perfect models of anything that we care to model and simulate; we're only left with repeatedly verifying a correct mathematical model of our universe.

Of course I wouldn't doubt technology will have a solution for novel stimulus issues as well... but you know... when you start hitting that level of correction and compensation, it's gets to the point where we're not even like human beings anymore; we'll be intelligent entities no doubt, but if we're going to optimize like that, then we might well end up looking like the borg.

I think before we get to that stage, we have to understand that we work from a human perspective; and that perhaps technology should be shaped, even restricted to allow for the exemplification of a human view point, over the view point of say... a super intelligent computer, or from the perspective of a simpler life form, like a cow.

 

[sans_pants]

At some point (how much better computers can do tasks that humans can do and more), it becomes something of a philosophical question.

If we have non-biological entities and integrated biological entities outperforming normal humans by several orders of magnitude...

What you'll find is that; perception of time scale changes, and perhaps more avenues are been explored and filled out than we are ready to do so.

It's concievable, that with such an accelerated rate of intelligence that we'll fill out every avenue of pursuit* within a short time span rendering everything... passe.

*for example in science, it's concievable that we'll enter a period where there is no longer discovery, having discovered the very core principles that binds the universe together, and using it to create models that are able to create highly accurate if not perfect models of anything that we care to model and simulate; we're only left with repeatedly verifying a correct mathematical model of our universe.

Of course I wouldn't doubt technology will have a solution for novel stimulus issues as well... but you know... when you start hitting that level of correction and compensation, it's gets to the point where we're not even like human beings anymore; we'll be intelligent entities no doubt, but if we're going to optimize like that, then we might well end up looking like the borg.

I think before we get to that stage, we have to understand that we work from a human perspective; and that perhaps technology should be shaped, even restricted to allow for the exemplification of a human view point, over the view point of say... a super intelligent computer, or from the perspective of a simpler life form, like a cow.

in what way would we shape technology to follow a human viewpoint? we are basically already programming ai from a human perspective, and we will be its creators. then later on we can merge out minds with computers, making us something wholly different but not necessarily inhuman

 

[Zaptruder]

in what way would we shape technology to follow a human viewpoint? we are basically already programming ai from a human perspective, and we will be its creators. then later on we can merge out minds with computers, making us something wholly different but not necessarily inhuman

By continuing to design and produce things for a human solution; chairs, furniture, human physical dimensions.

Even if the next step is to go VR; the VR world is interfaced in a human method, rather than what is efficient and possible for an accelerated intelligence in virtual space.

And leave some areas of human expressioned unexplored by AI or even integrated/accelerated intelligences.

It's almost a bit luddite like, but the flip side is a world where rapidly human beings as we understand them are ruled out of the equation.

 

[charsace]

Wireless iand then the linking of people to the internet.

 

[Earl Cazone]

in vitro meat could be solving so many problems on so many different levels.
i will gladly buy in vitro meat in fast food products, they can even replace the fats with omega-3 fats which are fucking healthy. so good

 

[Casp0r]

Just a question ... but to all the people that believe we can implant our 'minds' into a computer ... do you believe in souls?

 

[fierrotlepou]

love this thread, but the real question is when will I see one of these?

Aren't they busy cloning a mammoth? Heard about that shit months, maybe even years ago.

 

[Zaptruder]

Just a question ... but to all the people that believe we can implant our 'minds' into a computer ... do you believe in souls?

No. Do you want this thread to be a discussion about souls?

 

[Casp0r]

No. Do you want this thread to be a discussion about souls?

No more the whole 'will that copy be you' discussion.

If you go through a teleporter/into a new body/put on a computer ... how do you know that 'copy' is you?

Do you believe in something beyond your physical bodies ... that will live on in these copies? Or do you want to just accept that doing it will be the death and destruction of you and the creation of someone identical but not you.

 

[movie_club]

Just a question ... but to all the people that believe we can implant our 'minds' into a computer ... do you believe in souls?

Nope. I believe in hunks of meat with electricity running through it

 

[Kinitari]

No more the whole 'will that copy be you' discussion.

If you go through a teleporter/into a new body/put on a computer ... how do you know that 'copy' is you?

Do you believe in something beyond your physical bodies ... that will live on in these copies? Or do you want to just accept that doing it will be the death and destruction of you and the creation of someone identical but not you.

It's frustrating to me, I want to believe we are something more, but... we probably aren't. Only because the idea of destroying myself fundamentally goes against everything my instincts tell me - if the chain of conciousness is broken for even a second, I feel as though what comes out the other end will no longer be 'me'. But I guess I can think about it like dying for a few minutes, and being resuscitated.

When I think about it like that, it's less weird. Anyway, I won't have to worry about brain uploads or teleportation or anything for a long time.

 

[Caramello]

No more the whole 'will that copy be you' discussion.

If you go through a teleporter/into a new body/put on a computer ... how do you know that 'copy' is you?

Do you believe in something beyond your physical bodies ... that will live on in these copies? Or do you want to just accept that doing it will be the death and destruction of you and the creation of someone identical but not you.

How do you know that after you wake up from sleep you are still 'you' and not just a set of memories from yesterdays version of 'you'?

 

[bobbytkc]

No more the whole 'will that copy be you' discussion.

If you go through a teleporter/into a new body/put on a computer ... how do you know that 'copy' is you?

Do you believe in something beyond your physical bodies ... that will live on in these copies? Or do you want to just accept that doing it will be the death and destruction of you and the creation of someone identical but not you.

in quantum mechanics, you usually destroy the original state when you measure/teleport it. so no problems of a 'copy'

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Just a question ... but to all the people that believe we can implant our 'minds' into a computer ... do you believe in souls?

I don't believe we can just implant our mind in a computer (in the classical "brain upload via USB cable" sense anyway), and no, I do not believe in souls.

 

[Zaptruder]

No more the whole 'will that copy be you' discussion.

If you go through a teleporter/into a new body/put on a computer ... how do you know that 'copy' is you?

Do you believe in something beyond your physical bodies ... that will live on in these copies? Or do you want to just accept that doing it will be the death and destruction of you and the creation of someone identical but not you.

You wouldn't be the copy.

The best answer I give is relatively complex; but the gist of it is that when we start to drill down into the hypotheticals, the notion of self starts to become a bit hazy.

I'd say that the notion of self is simply a continuous electrical activity derived from the biochemical wetware of the persons brain. When that electrical activity ceases, that self is lost, and when restarted, another instantiation of self that would be supported by that wetware is created.

Sounds trippy, but in practice isn't something that's so easy to decouple. Typically, the electrical activity doesn't cease until major malfunction that is equivalent to death.

On the flipside, what it does mean is that you could slowly change the substrate on which this electrical neural activity operates and maintain that sense of self or person.

i.e. slowly change a biological brain to a computerized brain, portion by portion.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

You wouldn't be the copy.

The best answer I give is relatively complex; but the gist of it is that when we start to drill down into the hypotheticals, the notion of self starts to become a bit hazy.

I'd say that the notion of self is simply a continuous electrical activity derived from the biochemical wetware of the persons brain. When that electrical activity ceases, that self is lost, and when restarted, another instantiation of self that would be supported by that wetware is created.

Sounds trippy, but in practice isn't something that's so easy to decouple. Typically, the electrical activity doesn't cease until major malfunction that is equivalent to death.

Suppose all electrical activity froze for 30 seconds and then resumed. Are you now a different person?

Suppose someone snapped their fingers and an exact duplicate of you appeared, down to precise motion of electrons in your brain and exact position of all particles. What happens to your consciousness?

 

[Casp0r]

You wouldn't be the copy.

The best answer I give is relatively complex; but the gist of it is that when we start to drill down into the hypotheticals, the notion of self starts to become a bit hazy.

I'd say that the notion of self is simply a continuous electrical activity derived from the biochemical wetware of the persons brain. When that electrical activity ceases, that self is lost, and when restarted, another instantiation of self that would be supported by that wetware is created.

Sounds trippy, but in practice isn't something that's so easy to decouple. Typically, the electrical activity doesn't cease until major malfunction that is equivalent to death.

On the flipside, what it does mean is that you could slowly change the substrate on which this electrical neural activity operates and maintain that sense of self or person.

i.e. slowly change a biological brain to a computerized brain, portion by portion.

Good answer. Never thought of it like that. Makes it seem a little bit more possible.

Still don't think we'll ever have the technology to properly replicate a brain in a standard computer harddrive, too many variables, not just in the neuron structure, but in the actual presence of a body, hormones, chemicals etc etc constantly flooding and changing our brains. The constant stimulation from our central nerves system ... it's all part of what makes us us.

That plus the computational power needed to provide an accurate simulation of a brain ... it would need to be on a molecular level ... the flow of information and processing would just be too immense.

 

[X-Frame]

Wray, your posts are scaring the hell out of me and exciting me at the same time!

 

[Zaptruder]

Suppose all electrical activity froze for 30 seconds and then resumed. Are you now a different person?

Suppose someone snapped their fingers and an exact duplicate of you appeared, down to precise motion of electrons in your brain and exact position of all particles. What happens to your consciousness?

If the electrical activity that forms you ceases, and is then restarted, you're a different instance of yourself.

To put it another way; suppose someone ceased your electrical activity, replaced all the molecular structure of your body with different particles, and restarted you... how different is that compared to if someone molecularly analyzed you and created a different physical instantiation of your molecular pattern in a different location; and then starting electrical activity in that instance?

Especially when you understand that raw material that make up human beings is constantly been cycled and recycled.

If the electrical activity if frozen (note how this is only possible as a hypothetical), then it's no different that changing the timescale on which you consider motion; instead of considering timescale on seconds, when you start to consider timescale in scales of millionths or billionths of a second, then the electrical activity gets extremely slow; further still, and it basically ceases.

Of course outwardly, it may not seem very different - you seem like you'd still be the same person.

But so too does another copy of you without knowledge that it is cloned.

When the brain has its electrical activity reinitialized, then that instantiation of that person may be relatively convinced that they're still the same person. But so too does a copy that doesn't realize it is a copy.


What about the case of unconciousness? It's arguable... low level electrical activity continues to remain, but essentially the higher cognitive functions of a person are left vacant until their consciousness returns. It's kinda like a reboot in a sense.

But take the idea further still; at any point in time the level a person's electrical activity fluctuates, differing location, speed, intensity, and connectivity. Could it be said that parts of our brains are resetting themselves all the time?

For this reason, I think the notion of self and identity, consciousness, is something that's only very applicable from a human perspective; the human perspective that arrives from the sum of its parts operating in the manner that it does. That perspective becomes fractitious and inapplicable the more we drill down into the base components of what comprise us.

 

[Wray]

You've got quite the rosy view of the future I must say, especially this bit in particular. You really think people are going to appreciate art made strictly by a computer? That entirely computer generated art is going to be what fills the halls of the worlds most famous galleries and museums? That's a preposterous notion in my view. For the sake of our society and culture, I hope it doesn't happen.

Some people will. But like I said, human beings will still be producing art. I never said they wouldnt. I said if anything, MORE humans will be producing various forms of art than ever before in our history due to having so much more free time. Thanks in large part do not having to "work" as we do today, as well as people living longer live spans. Not to mention people being aided by technology and future people being immensely more intelligent than we are today thanks to brain modifications. I fully expect learning by mind downloading like in the matrix to become a reality eventually.

Someone takes Moore's Law a bit TOOO far.

Not when you factor in Quantum Computing.

Do you have any idea what Venus is like? Venus has no water. It once had, but then it got so hot that all the water particles shot up in space (just read this in "A Short History of Nearly Everything").

Of course I do. The reason Venus no longer has water is due to his crazy greenhouse effect, which is what is causing it to get so hot. Venus is well within the "Goldilocks Zone". First order of business to Terraforming Venus if the motivation is ever there would be to get out all of the bad toxic gases that are causing the greenhouse effect.

Then you can start putting water back on the surface. One way this could be done is over a long period of time, we could redirect comets and asteroids in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud into Venus. We would just need to redirect their orbits by using probes/crafts/nanobot swarms/whatever.

That can actually be done TODAY with current technology. Our space probes could be used to redirect an asteroid that was set to crash into Earth over the course of a few years/decades. If we caught it early enough that is.

 

[Wray]

Also, can the OP update the Main Post with Nanorobotics for use in Medicine. It really is going to be a huge deal and something we're going to see in our live times (Within 20 Years).

Cancer, Common Cold, Alzheimer's, Aids. All of these things will fall to the wrath of the Nanobot!

Also, another thing I just thought about is Desalination Technology. That's on the verge of exploding, and will do wonders for 3rd world countries.

 

[Harry Dresden]

My dream-tech is the wearable HUD.

I would like being able to walk around with an ear/eye piece that gave me a full HUD of things like News, Cellphone, appointments, music, etc.

I heard something about some tech that was displayed in Japan where it created the illusion of a floating 32" monitor about three feet infront of you - like the Rig Screen in Deadspace only you were the only one that could see it.

If that gets refined for the consumer market -- sign me up.

 

[wayward archer]

My dream-tech is the wearable HUD.

I would like being able to walk around with an ear/eye piece that gave me a full HUD of things like News, Cellphone, appointments, music, etc.

I heard something about some tech that was displayed in Japan where it created the illusion of a floating 32" monitor about three feet infront of you - like the Rig Screen in Deadspace only you were the only one that could see it.

If that gets refined for the consumer market -- sign me up.

We're actually pretty close to this being a reality.

I'm 100% certain it will happen this decade.

 

[X-Frame]

Also, can the OP update the Main Post with Nanorobotics for use in Medicine. It really is going to be a huge deal and something we're going to see in our live times (Within 20 Years).

Cancer, Common Cold, Alzheimer's, Aids. All of these things will fall to the wrath of the Nanobot!

Also, another thing I just thought about is Desalination Technology. That's on the verge of exploding, and will do wonders for 3rd world countries.

What is going to "power" the nanobots that will be in our bodies? The electricity we produce?


Also, for medical diagnosis will we ever be able to somehow "plug" into a computer which will display all known issues with the body? Everything from torn muscles, herniated discs, nerves, bones, body temperature -- basically everything? Even for sports performance, power lifting, etc.

Would love for something like that to be instantaneous, possibly even with personal computers so we could diagnose ourselves and seek help accordingly.

Going to 4 different doctors and getting X-Rays and MRI's I hope would soon be obsolete.

 

[Casp0r]

Also, can the OP update the Main Post with Nanorobotics for use in Medicine. It really is going to be a huge deal and something we're going to see in our live times (Within 20 Years).

Cancer, Common Cold, Alzheimer's, Aids. All of these things will fall to the wrath of the Nanobot!

I'm sorry but are you fucking kidding me? 20 Years?

We don't have robots that work properly on the macro scale ... and you think we can get them working nanoscale?

You think we can build on a nanoscale:

- a highly powerful sophisticated CPU capable of controlling advanced AI and control systems
- a highly sophisticated array of sensing units to allow the nanobot to locate and isolate the required cells
- mechanics to manipulate and move the nanobot around the body
- system to attack/manipulate it's surroundings in order for it to do something in the body
- power system

All while being completely biologically inert, non-toxic, non-carcinogenic and in such a volume it'll work?

Pull your head out your ass.

Nanorobotics is at minimum 100's of years away. The current state of nanorobotics is currently all theoretical with zero implementation in the real world. Go look what the most advanced nanorobotics system they have made so far ... a fucking switch that counts molecules ... a switch! And you think in 20 years we'll jump to sentient nanorobotics hunting down diseased and cancerous cells in our body? Please ...

Also, another thing I just thought about is Desalination Technology. That's on the verge of exploding, and will do wonders for 3rd world countries.

Now this ... is a good technology that is viable and will impact us.

 

[Wray]

I'm sorry but are you fucking kidding me? 20 Years?

We don't have robots that work properly on the macro scale ... and you think we can get them working nanoscale?

You think we can build on a nanoscale:

- a highly powerful sophisticated CPU capable of controlling advanced AI and control systems
- a highly sophisticated array of sensing units to allow the nanobot to locate and isolate the required cells
- mechanics to manipulate and move the nanobot around the body
- system to attack/manipulate it's surroundings in order for it to do something in the body
- power system

All while being completely biologically inert, non-toxic, non-carcinogenic and in such a volume it'll work?

Pull your head out your ass.

Nanorobotics is at minimum 100's of years away. The current state of nanorobotics is currently all theoretical with zero implementation in the real world. Go look what the most advanced nanorobotics system they have made so far ... a fucking switch that counts molecules ... a switch! And you think in 20 years we'll jump to sentient nanorobotics hunting down diseased and cancerous cells in our body? Please ...

Your whole post is completely LOL worthy. A 100 years? Really? 20 years is a looooooooooooong time man. Even longer when you consider how technology has and still is increasing exponentially.

 

[sullytao]

So just found another cool article on Popsci that may be of interest. Basically a realistic view on some predictions made for 2020.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/ar...-going-be-one-seriously-awesome-year?cmpid=tw
2020 Vision: A Look Forward To The Promises of a Truly Amazing Year
Get ready for the first complete synthetic human brain, moon mining, and much more
By Clay Dillow Posted 04.27.2011 at 1:15 pm

Future Cities! In the year 2020, cars will fly, cities will power themselves with sunlight, biofuels, and minerals mined from the moon, computers will be more powerful than the human brain, and everything will be a touchscreen! Perhaps. Kevin Hand

Robotic moon bases, chips implanted in our brains, self-driving cars, and high-speed rail linking London to Beijing. According to a dazzling number of technology predictions that single out the year 2020, it's going to be to be one hell of a year. Here, we take a look at some of the wonders it holds in store.

2020, of course, is just a convenient target date for roughly-ten-years-off predictions. "It's not any more particularly interesting, in my opinion, than 2019 or 2021," says Mike Liebhold, a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future, and an all-around technology expert with a resume that includes stints with Intel, Apple, and even Netscape. "There's a continuum of technological development, and that's just an easy date for an editor or a writer to get a handle on.

After spending decades helping various top-tier tech companies develop and deploy their cutting edge technologies around the world, Liebhold now helps clients take a long view of their businesses so they can make better decisions in the short term. He and his colleagues at the Institute for the Future don't help clients read tea leaves (predictions are for soothsayers and crystal ball gazers) but they do help them read what he calls the signals -- those things you can see in the world today that allow you to make reasonable forecasts about what the future holds.

"We help people think systematically about the future," Liebhold says. "We don't give them answers, we give them foresight."

In other words, the year 2020 (and 2019, and 2021) is Liebhold's business. And he forecasts a pretty interesting world a decade from now. For instance, given the current forward momentum of mobile technology and the ever-present forces of economies of scale, Liebhold says it's conceivable that most of the world's population will be able to afford a Web-enabled smartphone or tablet device by 2020, offering everyone on the planet geo-location services and access to global information and communication (the forces working against this, he notes, are political rather than technological).

Facial recognition and other biometrics will be commonplace, he says. High-performance data visualizations that currently require supercomputing power will become commonplace as well, driving technological and scientific innovation at even faster rates. We'll see wider distribution of things like AI and immersive media experiences like viewpoint-independent 3-D. We'll finally have some decent augmented reality glasses.

And what won't happen? We won't be uploading the human mind to a machine by 2020, a la Ray Kurzweil. We won't be cruising the streets in self-driving vehicles, and while robots may be rolling around on the moon, we won't be mining minerals from extraterrestrial sources.

So what will the world look like in 2020? With Liebhold riding shotgun, we took a quick spin through 2020 to see what the future might hold. Click through the gallery to see some of the bolder 2020 forecasts we've seen--and why some of them don't stand a chance.


Japan Will Build a Robotic Moon Base
JAXA

After March’s devastating earthquake and tsunami (and the ongoing nuclear crisis in Fukushima prefecture), Japan has a long and expensive rebuilding phase in front of it. But the Japanese have proven themselves nothing if not resilient and resourceful in the face of such hardship.

Should the powers that be decide to continue forward with Japan’s ambitious plan to build a robotic lunar outpost by 2020--built by robots, for robots--there’s no technological reason why they shouldn’t be able to. In fact, there’s really no nation better for the job in terms of technological prowess.

“I think that’s probably doable, although they have some economic problems right now,” the Institute for the Future’s Mike Liebhold says. “There are private launch vehicles that are probably capable of doing that, and I think the robotics by that point are going to be quite robust.”

PopSci Predicts: Technologically possible, but economics will be the deciding factor.

China Will Connect Beijing to London via High Speed Rail

China’s ambitious scheme for a high speed rail line linking East and West is a prime example of one of those projects that is technologically possible yet unlikely, at least in the time frame given. “I think technically it’s certainly feasible, but I’m not sure that politically and economically it’s going to fly,” Liebhold says, citing the complexities (and costs) of securing right of way across 17 nations.

China’s plan: offer to pick up the tab. China would pay for and build the infrastructure in exchange for the rights to natural resources like minerals, timber, and oil from the nations that are benefit from being linked in to the trans-Asian/European corridor.

Even so, nine years isn’t a lot of time to lay all that track, and there’s no way China can control for geopolitical issues, civil unrest, and other variables inherent in such a large-scale undertaking.

PopSci Predicts: Possible but unlikely.

Cars Will Drive Themselves

Self-driving cars that take to the streets autonomously while passengers kick back and relax have been both a sci-fi staple and a technological holy grail pursued by the likes of Google, DARPA, and automakers themselves (Stanford U's self-driving Audi TT is pictured above). But before we can have cars that think for themselves (a la DARPA) or even “car trains” that sync up so several vehicles can follow the lead of one human driver, our cars have to be able to talk to each other. All of our cars.

“It’s unlikely, in my opinion, because of the heterogenous nature of the vehicles in the world,” Liebhold says of self-driving tech. “Although there are people who have a notion of the kinds of communication networks we need between vehicles, even if we made the decision today to implement something it probably wouldn’t be mature enough by 2020 to work.”

Our global wireless infrastructure is inadequate even for all of our media computing, Liebhold says, so the idea of rolling out even more sophisticated wireless infrastructure to link our cars and other traffic tech within a decade is simply not likely.

PopSci Predicts: Certainly doable, but not by 2020.

Biofuels Will be Cost-Competitive With Fossil Fuels

This prediction comes courtesy of the U.S. Navy, which along with the other branches of the U.S. military has looked extensively into ways to wean its own operations off of fossil fuels. The military on the whole has pledged to get half of its energy from renewable resources by 2020, and the Navy whole-heartedly believes that it can turn to fifty percent biofuels by that point in time.

“I think that’s reasonable,” Liebhold says. “Again, this is geopolitical, this isn’t technical.” The military understands as well as anyone that being dependent on foreign nations--some of whom have a tenuous relationship with the U.S. and its global military presence--for fuel puts us in a potential strategic bind.

But the military brass’s enthusiasm for biofuels doesn’t just spell cleaner naval fleets or ground vehicles burning a 50-50 blend. The military buys fuel like everyone else, so the Navy's forecast that biofuels will be cost-competitive with oil by 2020 bodes well for all of us, not just the military. If the Navy is correct, biofuels--though still a contributor to CO2 emissions--could take a sizable chunk out of the amount of oil and gas we’re pumping from the ground (and, you know, fighting over) by decade’s end.

PopSci Predicts: Feasible.

The 'Flying Car' Will be Airborne

“No. The air traffic control for something like that is incredible,” Liebhold says, returning to his argument about self-driving automobiles. “If we can’t even get the communication infrastructure for our cars, how the heck are we going to build an infrastructure for aerial communications? And on top of that I don’t think flying technology is going to scale down to the personal level by then either.”

PopSci Predicts: The military might have its prototype “flying humvee” by 2020 (DARPA wants it by 2015), but the tech won’t trickle down to the rest of us for quite a while.

We'll Control Devices Via Microchips Implanted in Our Brains

The human brain remains biology’s great, unconquered wilderness, and while the idea of meshing the raw power of the human mind with electronic stimulus and responsiveness has long existed in both science fiction and--to some degree--in reality, we likely won’t be controlling out devices with a thought in 2020 as Intel has predicted. While it’s currently possible to implant a chip in the brain and even get one to respond to or stimulate gross neural activity, we simply don’t understand the brain’s nuance well enough to create the kind of interface that would let you channel surf by simply thinking about it.

“Neural communications are both chemical and electrical,” Liebhold says. “And we have no idea about how that works, particularly in the semantics of neural communication. So yeah, somebody might be able to put electronics inside somebody’s cranium, but i personally believe it’s only going to be nominally useful for very, very narrow therapeutic applications.”

PopSci Predicts: We might have chips in the brain by 2020, but they won’t be doing much.

All New Screens Will Be Ultra-Thin OLEDs

It doesn’t take much more than a trip around the Web to see some pretty amazing screen technologies that are already making it out of the lab and onto the shelf. There will certainly still be some “antique” monitor screens hanging around in 2020, but as far as new stock is concerned it’s easy to see the entire industry shifting to paper-thin OLED surfaces, many with touch capability.

“I think that’s legitimate, we’ve been forecasting that for years,” Liebhold says. “So surfaces will become computational, walls, mirrors, windows.”

PopSci Predicts: “Give that one a high probability,” Liebhold says. Done.

Commercial Space Will Take Us to the Moon and Asteroids (and We'll be Mining Them)

This prediction came by way of Esther Dyson, who knows a thing or two about technology. But we’re only willing to meet her half way here. By all accounts, it looks as though there will be a robust private space industry by 2020. SpaceX already has deals to resupply the ISS, and Virgin Galactic has demonstrated its ability to take tourists to very high (but suborbital) altitudes.

But as for the mining of extraterrestrial bodies like asteroids, or commercial space companies arranging holidays to the moon? We’re not holding our breaths. For one, Liebhold notes, the human body was not designed for long-duration space travel and it’s going to take us decades (if ever) to figure out how to fight the physiological deterioration that would set in on long-distance manned missions.

But even robotic missions aren’t so simple. Look several decades our for robotic mining missions to asteroids, he says. But look for things like the space elevator to happen first.

PopSci Predicts: Commercial space travel is the real deal, but beyond orbital flights things become exponentially more difficult. The moon, asteroids, and mining missions are unlikely targets within the 2020 time frame.

A $1,000 Computer Will Have the Processing Power of the Human Brain

Cisco’s chief futurist made this prediction a couple of years ago, and Liebhold doesn’t think the company is so far off.

““I think that’s reasonable,” he says. “That’s not the intelligence of the human brain, that’s just the ability, the number of cycles. If you look at Moore’s Law and the way the cores or the number of processors on chips is growing, that’s totally viable.”

PopSci Predicts: Likely.

Universal Translation Will be Commonplace in Mobile Devices

DARPA has been working on a universal translator for decades, with varying degrees of success (and failure). Language, it turns out, is an incredibly complex thing, especially when you get down to the micro level and start examining regional dialects, slang, and other semantic nuance. But as the cloud goes, so goes our ability to translate on the fly.

“Language translation won’t take place on the device, it takes place in the cloud,” Liebhold says. “In order for a computer to detect what it is your saying, it has to compare what you’re saying with millions of other examples. That’s done in the cloud. So it’s reasonable to say that any device with a network connection will be able to translate languages.”

But, he cautions, while we should be able to seamlessly swap words between the mainstream languages on our mobile devices by 2020 (we can do that now, to some extent, with Google Translate), minority languages will still be a long time coming. Companies (like Google) and governments are putting together very good bodies of knowledge for this kind of translation--Google is combing through U.N. transcripts to see how even lesser-spoken tongues translate spoken English, and vice versa--it will simply take time for translation to become accurate and effective.

PopSci Predicts: Probable, but with varying degrees of accuracy depending on the language.

We'll Finally See Some Decent AR Glasses

Regular readers of PopSci have been salivating over the promise of augmented reality for ages, but in reality it never seems to live up to the hype. Current AR apps for smartphones are marginally helpful, but the amount of data one can access through them isn’t extremely vast, and you have to view the world through your phone display to get the information overlay.

What we really want is AR overlaid directly onto whatever we happen to be looking at. We want that data to be rich, customizable, relevant and easy to access. By 2020, we should have all that.

The evolution of AR is happening in two codependent technological arenas. For one, glasses themselves are getting better. Current AR apps and glasses too often have incongruities between the real world and the graphical overlay, and in the case of glasses such misalignment can be disorienting, even nauseating. By 2020, Liebhold says, position sensing, GPS locating, and image positioning should be mature to the point that even when you’re moving quite fast (say, riding a bike down the street) the AR can keep up with the real world.

The other side of the equation is the spatial Web, which is coming along quite nicely. As more Web sites and digital services imbue themselves with geolocation data, that spatial Web becomes more robust. “We’re going to see the data in the world around you become rich so the world itself will become self-explanatory,” Liebhold says. “Things and places will have rich detail attached to them.”

Next up: AR contact lenses. They won’t be commercially common by 2020, but Liebhold thinks we’ll definitely be seeing working models coming out of the lab by decade’s end, with regular rollout coming in the following years.

PopSci Predicts: We’re already halfway there.

We'll Create a Synthetic Brain That Functions Like the Real Deal

We’ve already established that it’s possible to build a computer with the processing power of a brain. But is it possible to build a human brain from scratch. Researchers at the Blue Brain Project at the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, think so. They’ve already build a model of the 10,000-neuron neocortical column that, running on a massively powerful IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer (pictured above), looks pretty amazing.

But the human brain contains billions upon billions of neurons, and a lot of its processes are poorly understood. There’s an argument that as we build a brain, we’ll learn more and more about it, increasing our rate of understanding exponentially year after year. But there’s still so much we don’t know that it’s difficult to be optimistic that even the geniuses (we’ll resist the temptation to call them brainiacs) at Blue Brain can grow their synthetic brain that quickly.

PopSci Predicts: We’ll get there. Someday.

 

[Johnlenham]

Met a guy in India from California on honey moon with his wife who was working he says on robotics in silicone valley that work with eyes sight, like say allow blind people to see and such.

A guy with us then joked "like the terminator?" and he said yeah similar.
God knows if it was true but him and his wife were nice folks!

 

[TacticalFox88]

With the way politics are now with Republicans blocking any investment because of lolsocialism, you won't see those cities until America stops being fucking retarded.

 

[msv]

Not impressed by these foresights, he's on the wrong track with most of these things imo.

Flying cars are a pretty useless luxury in most places. Also inefficient compared to normal cars. Given the crisis and lack of necessity for such a gadget, I won't see it 'taking off' in the cities by 2020.

Robotic moonbase? Seems pretty arbitrary. Maybe to mine Helium3? Don't see that taking off by 2020 either. Again, not because we couldn't, but what would be the use?

A railway linking Beijing to London, ehh? Doesn't have anything to do with 'future' tech.

Self-driving cars, I see them being doable by 2020, don't know why they would say otherwise here, especially if they see flying cars taking off by then, lol.

Nothing really new with biofuels either. But batteries will take over I think, around or after 2020 fusion reactors will provide for most of our energy needs.

OLED FTW! Not really new tech though, but yeah, I see it getting big before 2020.

I never understood what they were talking about when computers would rival the processing power of a human brain. Doesn't make any sense, the brain works mostly parallel and can't really be compared to conventional CPU's.

I'm not sure about proper 'hud' type glasses. We'd need a company to bring it to the masses, perhaps Apple will be the on to do it. The problem here isn't the HUD though, but interfacing with it. It will have to be more practical than a smartphone. And who would want to keep on glasses all day? The same goes for contacts (if you don't wear contacts already that is).

Synthetic brain - more like a simulated brain. And yeah, we will get there soon enough. perhaps 2020, or a bit later, but we will certainly get there soon enough. The article's wrong about it being so complex though, as long as we have the raw processing power, we can just simulate it down to the neurons and fire it up. The biggest problem here is the ethics.

 

[Wray]

With the way politics are now with Republicans blocking any investment because of lolsocialism, you won't see those cities until America stops being fucking retarded.

It just means America will continue to lag behind while other countries continue to zoom past us.

Met a guy in India from California on honey moon with his wife who was working he says on robotics in silicone valley that work with eyes sight, like say allow blind people to see and such.

A guy with us then joked "like the terminator?" and he said yeah similar.
God knows if it was true but him and his wife were nice folks!

Bionic Eyes

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=steps-towards-a-bionic-ey

 

[Burger]

Fuck me I hope the future looks like a out of date stock image.

 

[sullytao]

Not impressed by these foresights, he's on the wrong track with most of these things imo.

Flying cars are a pretty useless luxury in most places. Also inefficient compared to normal cars. Given the crisis and lack of necessity for such a gadget, I won't see it 'taking off' in the cities by 2020.

Robotic moonbase? Seems pretty arbitrary. Maybe to mine Helium3? Don't see that taking off by 2020 either. Again, not because we couldn't, but what would be the use?

A railway linking Beijing to London, ehh? Doesn't have anything to do with 'future' tech.

Self-driving cars, I see them being doable by 2020, don't know why they would say otherwise here, especially if they see flying cars taking off by then, lol.

Nothing really new with biofuels either. But batteries will take over I think, around or after 2020 fusion reactors will provide for most of our energy needs.

OLED FTW! Not really new tech though, but yeah, I see it getting big before 2020.

I never understood what they were talking about when computers would rival the processing power of a human brain. Doesn't make any sense, the brain works mostly parallel and can't really be compared to conventional CPU's.

I'm not sure about proper 'hud' type glasses. We'd need a company to bring it to the masses, perhaps Apple will be the on to do it. The problem here isn't the HUD though, but interfacing with it. It will have to be more practical than a smartphone. And who would want to keep on glasses all day? The same goes for contacts (if you don't wear contacts already that is).

Synthetic brain - more like a simulated brain. And yeah, we will get there soon enough. perhaps 2020, or a bit later, but we will certainly get there soon enough. The article's wrong about it being so complex though, as long as we have the raw processing power, we can just simulate it down to the neurons and fire it up. The biggest problem here is the ethics.

I don't know. I think his input is pretty realistic. He agrees with you that in that we won't see commercial flying cars by 2020. For the most part the technology seems to be here but the cars will have to be ai controlled only since I doubt even the most experienced pilot would even consider flying between hundreds of others in close proximity.

I agree we may see self driving cars by 2020. The guy making the predictions thinks there needs to be a system linking every car for it to happen. We know that todays prototypes have ways of seeing other cars and obstacles and still perform well. General Motors say they may even have one out as early as 2018 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22529906/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/.

OLED tech itself isn't new as you say. However things like touch screen mirrors and surfaces will be awesome if done right.

The glasses are going be shit yourself awesome I think. Heres some mockup concept vids of what it might be like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5ywMb6SeGc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_u34kV9go0&NR=1&feature=fvwp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Nlh4wj3Vs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJyIuEnEecA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORQjBOddQgM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_xF8ujj7ko (maybe abit further away than 2020 but imagine education being like this in school)

 

[xbhaskarx]

Muslamic ray guns

 

[Zaptruder]

Synthetic brain - more like a simulated brain. And yeah, we will get there soon enough. perhaps 2020, or a bit later, but we will certainly get there soon enough. The article's wrong about it being so complex though, as long as we have the raw processing power, we can just simulate it down to the neurons and fire it up. The biggest problem here is the ethics.

The raw processing power to simulate the matter that will produce a 'virtual brain' several orders of magnitude greater than the power required to emulate the computing capacity of a brain.

To put it another way; you're suggesting that we can recreate calculators virtually, by creating a physical simulation of a calculator, when it's far more efficient to create or reinterpret the code for the calculator on the computer.

That said, if we haven't figured out the inner workings of the brain by then, then yeah, we will certainly be able to 'brute force' a solution.

 

[Zaptruder]

I don't know. I think his input is pretty realistic. He agrees with you that in that we won't see commercial flying cars by 2020. For the most part the technology seems to be here but the cars will have to be ai controlled only since I doubt even the most experienced pilot would even consider flying between hundreds of others in close proximity.

I agree we may see self driving cars by 2020. The guy making the predictions thinks there needs to be a system linking every car for it to happen. We know that todays prototypes have ways of seeing other cars and obstacles and still perform well. General Motors say they may even have one out as early as 2018 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22529906/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/.

OLED tech itself isn't new as you say. However things like touch screen mirrors and surfaces will be awesome if done right.

The glasses are going be shit yourself awesome I think. Heres some mockup concept vids of what it might be like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5ywMb6SeGc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_u34kV9go0&NR=1&feature=fvwp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Nlh4wj3Vs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJyIuEnEecA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORQjBOddQgM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_xF8ujj7ko (maybe abit further away than 2020 but imagine education being like this in school)

None of those visualizations are quite there IMO.

The last one is probably the best... but the potential for AR is really overwhelming... far more potential than what's been shown here.

As they say... the devil is in the details.

 

[msv]

That said, if we haven't figured out the inner workings of the brain by then, then yeah, we will certainly be able to 'brute force' a solution.

That's what I'm saying. And we will have to, the nuances are important, and I don't think we will have a detailed enough imaging system to look at brains in operation. Doesn't mean we can't use any shortcuts though, as in, leaving out some unneeded details in the simulation.

 

[XMonkey]

Nothing really new with biofuels either. But batteries will take over I think, around or after 2020 fusion reactors will provide for most of our energy needs.

Sure you're thinking fusion? Because that's not going to happen by 2020, at least not in any form that is going to be a significant amount of our energy usage.

 

[Casp0r]

That's what I'm saying. And we will have to, the nuances are important, and I don't think we will have a detailed enough imaging system to look at brains in operation. Doesn't mean we can't use any shortcuts though, as in, leaving out some unneeded details in the simulation.

Yeah ... you might make the hardware ... but can you write the software?

Just look at how crap AI advances have been these last 50 years ... and look at how far hardware has come.

If there is one unified future theory that we consistently get wrong ... that's our ablity to create AI. Years ago we envisioned PC's with a fraction of the power we have today in our smartphones ... yet we haven't even made an proper AI yet.

Shit we could put together a computer today that could simulate the brain ... however what code are we going to run on it?

Despite what you may think, we can't just copypasta someones brainwaves into a computer.

 

[msv]

Sure you're thinking fusion? Because that's not going to happen by 2020, at least not in any form that is going to be a significant amount of our energy usage.

There are tons of projects running and some are coming very close already. There have been net gains from fusion.

Yeah ... you might make the hardware ... but can you write the software?

Just look at how crap AI advances have been these last 50 years ... and look at how far hardware has come.

You're misunderstanding, I'm not talking about any AI. All we need to do is simulate the physical part of the brain, the way neurons work and interact with each other. So we don't need to write AI software, this is much simpler.

Despite what you may think, we can't just copypasta someones brainwaves into a computer.

There's no need for that.

 

[Casp0r]

You're misunderstanding, I'm not talking about any AI. All we need to do is simulate the physical part of the brain, the way neurons work and interact with each other. So we don't need to write AI software, this is much simpler.

I highly doubt it'll work like that. You can't just 'turn it on'. If you do the brains going to be completely retarded and not work, think or do anything useful.

Think about it, the brain grew from a 2 single cells and built itself up through your life, from your conception. It's perfectly designed to work exactly in your body. You're not just going to be able to 'build' one.

Then if you want to simulate the brain from an conception (ie grow it from a few cells) you'll have to simulate the body and all the stimulation that makes the brain what it is.

 

[elfinke]

I apologise if this has been answered elsewhere in this thread, but what is the step in batteries, or more precisely, storage of power? I look around and feel as though batteries are the bottleneck in many of our technologies now; phones, cars, houses etc

 

[msv]

I highly doubt it'll work like that. You can't just 'turn it on'. If you do the brains going to be completely retarded and not work, think or do anything useful.

The connections will start forming, you'll just need to provide it with data. Preferably as humanlike as possible, so perhaps we should make a robotic body with the same sensory IO of a human and link it up to the supercomputer.

Think about it, the brain grew from a 2 single cells and built itself up through your life, from your conception. It's perfectly designed to work exactly in your body. You're not just going to be able to 'build' one.

There's a common design in all the brains, so we'll just need to simulate that. There's no need to simulate the growth of a brain as well.

I apologise if this has been answered elsewhere in this thread, but what is the step in batteries, or more precisely, storage of power? I look around and feel as though batteries are the bottleneck in many of our technologies now; phones, cars, houses etc

Yeah, I agree, more power in smaller format would make so many things possible. There's battery tech that uses oxygen that's under development. http://www.science20.com/news_articles/airfuelled_battery_lasts_ten_times_long_yes_please

Perhaps other types of batteries are under development as well, anyone know of any?

 

[Tenks]

I really, really want scientists to figure out a way to effectively pull off fusion. It would solve so many problems. We could finally move all of our transportation off fossil fuels and make them electric. It would be cleaner, cheaper and more efficient. It is, by far, the technology I most hope succeeds.

 

[Tr4nce]

Great thread man!

And yes, nanotechnology will be amazing! Can't wait to see what the future holds in store for us. Also, mankind really amazes me sometimes with all these futuristic idea's and concept stuff.